Prove Me Right, or Give Me Satisfaction
by Aepfel
Summary: Arthur muses over what has happened to Alfred over the past few centuries, and thus decides to pay the American a visit, but what he finds is not a cheerful and optimistic young Alfred, but instead a man who has seen too much of the world and quite ready to throw away everything that makes him what they are. WARNING: Will contain violence, drug use, smut (MxM), harsh language. UKUS
1. Intro

He doesn't realize it, does he?

Is he aware that that mask is a little transparent?

Does he even have a clue that we all know?

It's been nearly four hundred years now- for most of us, it happened after mere decades, a few of us going on into the centuries.

But him?

He kept that air of bright optimism for so long.

Its only natural that when he fell, it took the greatest toll on himself, his pride, his mind and his people.

If they even noticed.

He was the representative of America, the United States of. Note the use of past tense. He's not at all the youngling colony that he used to be, so chipper and ready to take on the world. He still has that ready for anything mentality, and he loudly boasts it about every single time he's given the chance. But?

Something within him was broken.

Maybe most of them didn't notice, too wrapped up in their own worlds, their domestic interests and neighbor affairs. The Austrian Republic was too busy figuring through decades of debt, Germany too worried over helping Austria, calming the eccentrix Prussian- ex-Prussian? Kalinite? Whatever he went by these days- Gilbert really was an enigma in this day and age. Japan was focused on rebuilding himself and recovering. Russia handling his dramatic changes from the Soviet Union to the modern Russia we know today- if anyone not Russian in the finest can love that oaf.

They were too busy. They didn't have the time, nor reason to look to the most powerful nation on Earth. What problems could he possibly have, they likely reasoned. He's powerful, so much so that even trillions of dollars in debt, he still has nothing to fear from his neighbors, too well-armed and well-trained that he was never going to be one to fall to war, not when fighting one-on-one. No one matched him.

When it came to national pride, no one was better off nor worse than Alfred. His people held an amazing level of pride to be who they were, to hold that Star Spangled Banner high above their heads and sing their praises to their nation, even placing him right alongside God, himself. Alfred had never been quite comfortable with that, but he could hardly stop them. They loved him, they loved him! Maybe that's why he continued to power through every misfortune and blow to his nation that should have ripped him to his knees. He was powerful.

No one could doubt him. Not even those of his people who so vehemently and verbally cast him down. Of all of us, I don't think a single one of us ever dealt with a Nation as diverse and blended and yet starkly contested in its national identity than him. How does he do it, I would often wonder over my afternoon tea, gazing over the shore and surf from my Cornwall summer home. How does he handle such a difficult National mind, and yet still grin as if he were the happiest man on Earth? Who wouldn't be so happy when they were quite literally the most powerful man in the world?

I remember a time when that title was mine. And now, the thing I created, raised and moulded and nurtured from that fateful day in sixteen oh-eight, up until he betrayed everything I did for him, declaring that I was a monster in public, calling me out, blaming me for every atrocity that wasn't even my fault. I was simply following orders- did he not understand then that I was not acting of my will, that I had hardly had my own in centuries?

Ah- whoops, I nearly broke that cup- Better set that down and take a few deep breaths. We certainly don't need another spilling of tea.

In any case, no. He couldn't have. He had been so free, so unbridled to do as he pleased, so far away from the Crown's eye and too distant to heed its will and weigh. He must understand now what I had done and why. I all too well understood him.

What I didn't understand, though, was why he insisted so loudly, so brashly and in such an... _American_ way, for lack of a better term... why did he think he had to pretend to be alright when around us? We were all broken, shattered from the inside out, battered by the conflicting desires and lives of anywhere between a hundred to millions of individual lives, every one of them influential, and yet we still were our own person, in some bastard sense of the word. We defied physics, and yet it took its toll on us. At this point in the game, none of us had the ability to be truly happy.

Perhaps he is simply trying to prove me wrong.

Perhaps in doing so, he is only proving me right.


	2. P S I Love You

The Briton really should have known better- this wasn't his business. They weren't supposed to help each other through these times of distress, not the personal ones. Then again, those rules were never actually written nor agreed upon. They only seemed to be brought up when something that wasn't supposed to happen had already happened.

But this? How could Arthur possibly ignore this?

Fuck the bill, he had to know that Alfred was okay. He forwent the warning and hurried through every alert that he was to be charged for an international call and put a ring through to America anyway. He hadn't even expected an answer, really, but the initially groggy voice that soon after became cheerful was what it took to ensure in Arthur's mind that it really was finally happening to Alfred.

"Hello…? Jones residence-"

Ah, that was a bit of a pain. He wasn't even a James anymore, much less the Jameson he once called himself so happily, having taken Arthur's middle name as his own surname- God, it was too much to think about, the Briton actually frozen in place as he toyed with the mental suggestion that America was no longer a colony. Hadn't he just said an hour earlier that he had come to terms with this idea?

"Hello? Anyone there- They said it was an international. You're taking the charge for this ain't ya?"

A violent twitch was enough to break the Briton form his loss to the sea of musings, soon replying back with a rather harsh bout of scolding.

"Ain't is not a word, Alfred Jones! Honestly, how do you even halfway expect to run a country when all you do is blather nonsensical words in and out of your speech as if they were lexicologically valid!?"

At some point Arthur's lecture had ceased, the giver having finally realized that his attempt at harsh advice was being given to a mere dial tone, and probably a line operator who was more than a little confused as to why someone would phone the other side of the world just to give a speech about the proper use of the Queen's English.

Of all the things Alfred needed in that moment, an earful of noise about all the things he had done wrong, even if it was something as simple as the lazy use of a colloquial term that had woven its way into pop culture and well into the minds of his nation's greats. He was already a bit woozy from the lingering effects of a couple mouthfulls of alcohol, of which the type he really wasn't quite sure at the moment. It was something clear, so it was either moonshine or vodka. He really wasn't too worried, for he would notice in the morning which of his bottles had been worked on. Sometimes there were even instances wherein he hit a little of everything in one night. The headache alone would tell him what had happened in such a case.

But for right now, he simply had clacked the piece back onto the receiver, not even caring to hear Arthur's voice at the moment. Even when scolding, the other's voice alone was usually enough to remind him that he had duties and responsibility that meant he had to get back his optimism and be able to cheerfully address the next meeting or gathering.

Maybe being so happy about it in their presence was exactly what made him so incredibly depressed with it.

Idle lips nursed a small glass of the moonshine-and-or-vodka as the American slowly drifted between the lands of slumber and wakefullness, only prevented from actually sleeping by the crooning of some hit new band wafting over the radio. As much as the emotional toll of life itself weighed upon him, mentally and physically, that voice was one that was both strangely familiar and completely new, paired with a homely sound of music behind it that somehow managed to draw a smile on alcohol-stained features.

"I'll be coming home again to you, love, and 'til the day I do, love, P. S., I love you..."

The final sentiment of the phrase repeated into fading, still lingering on Alfred's lips as he continued whispering the words, even when the record stopped spinning and he finally drifted off into sleep, to have what he knew as peace for once in this war-torn world that was America circa 1963.

Author's Notes: This story is set, primarily, in the 1960s, and will (hopefully-) include a number of flashbacks to various points in Arthur and Alfred's histories, all the way back to the early 1600s, when Alfred was just a wee bae.

As for the Jameson/Jones bit- I headcanon that Alfreds original Surname was Jameson, taken from my Headcanon Arthur's middle name, James. This was changed to Jones upon American Independence.


	3. Stop The World I Wanna Get Off

Usually, when someone is in deep distress, either over the inability to perfect a skill of some sort or something less trivial, such as the loss of a love d one, they cry, they shout, their every action is that of someone in great pain. When such pain occurs, a person will look to those above them for comfort and assurance that everything will be okay. But what about those of higher powers?

When you are the most powerful man in the most powerful country on Earth, you really don't have anyone to look to in such times. For Alfred, this was simply another of those, and once again he was meant to face his worries alone, without guidance, without help. His help with others was sought, but what was he supposed to say to someone feeling the loss as much as he did?

There had been many a warning about this kind of thing happening- all of the Fellows saw how much pain and suffering had occurred in the others when a human got close to a Fellow, and eventually passed away, as all humans do. For some, it was a revolutionary, like Jeanne d' New Orleans for France. For others, it was a leader of great influence, such as Austria's Kaiser Johann, or Prussia's Frederich Wilhem the Great. Some took on nicknames, and were beloved by people and country.

But these stories of great love and great devotion always end the same: in great tragedy. Every one of these tales we hear, each of them are worse than the last, either because we should have known better how painful this was going to be, or that we had harboured too much hope that this time it would be different. It never is.

For Alfred, that day came in the middle of Summer, in an already trying time. He was already stressed out and ready to scream, but he continued to put on his mask and pretend to be happy for the Fellows, to put on his smile that well and truly belongs somewhere between politics and magazine covers, to adjust his tie and puff his chest out with pride for a Nation that while almost unimaginably powerful, was ready to give up on itself.

The rift between the factions of Americans, as had been growing since 1608, and only getting worse, resulting in Civil War and coming in waves long after one argument was (somewhat) settled in the form of Civil Rights and Women's Sufferage and a plethora of other things; it was painful. The Fellow of America had so very little left to show when his once upon a time seemingly boundless optimism and happiness was called upon for the world- though ego was very likely a factor in his hearing cries for help when little more than a small nod of attention was probably more wanted.

But that man gave him what he needed to live on, to keep up the mask and refuse to break when stress and anger and paranoia was so ready to cut him down. John F. Kennedy was arguably the most charismatic and wonderful leader America had seen in its existence. How else could one break the chain of elder, white, protestant men leading the country? Now, he had a leader with youth, vigor, and a Catholic upbringing. Anyone who looks at Alfred's history for too long ought to see that usually, he had a bit of a problem with Catholicism.

But that day? When the man Alfred had become friends with, familiar to the point of calling him by first name, even going so far as to omit the title of President in some stations, though certainly not in the public eye, when he was killed, all Alfred could do was stare in horror. He hadn't even _been _there. He had been back home, in one of his many homes in America, the one he had first called him on the James River, near the Virginia Coast.

The bowl of cereal he had been preparing now lay scattered across the tiles of his kitchen floor, little bits of corn flakes making a patternless mess over a previously clean tile. He didn't even notice. His gaze was focused so sharply on the small screen, cerulean gaze filled with shock, horror and that same feeling of loss that had wracked the hearts and minds of so many of his kind. Unlike the normal humans, who felt only the sorrow of themselves and the suggestion of pain from others, the Fellows knew all of it. When something like that happens, that strikes at the heart of most, if not all Americans in the way that that event did- it was a powerful pain that no shoulder to cry on nor comforting words could fix.

In time he would come to return to somewhat normal, but that pain would forever weigh on his mind, just as much as the coming several months would. This event was a powerful cataclysm in the life of Alfred Fitzgerald Jones.

It wasn't the only major event to change his life in that decade, but it was certainly the most painful.


End file.
